


Dust to Dust

by miss_nettles_wife



Series: Whumptober 2019 [10]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: End of the World, F/F, Love Confessions, M/M, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019, gangs all here :p, unconcious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 05:49:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21031271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: Wumptober Day 10: UnconsciousIt's never a good sign, when the gang gets back together.





	Dust to Dust

**Author's Note:**

> i worry that i write dash too soft sometimes. But i think that's maybe not a bad thing. anyway, here's a pallete cleanser of angst after two relatively sweet fics

One of the easiest ways to tell how bad Marshall thought a problem was by the amount of the gang he got back together. For example, if he called in only Simon, the situation was probably not dire. When he called in Simon, Melanie, Sarah Sue, Tod, Dash AND Janet, the situation was probably extremely dangerous.   
  
When Mayor Chisel called the gang back to Eerie, it was apocalyptic.   
  
At least, Dash thought, Melaine had stopped screaming. Instead, she was pacing backward and forwards, her shiny low heeled shoes looking far too pristine for the rotted wood floor of the Old Hitchcock Mill. She’d been screaming at him and Janet for being too rough with Marshall and potentially displacing his IV port. It was easy for her to do that since she hadn’t been one of the small team that had decided that they weren’t going to just abandon him at Eerie Hospital. Anyway, they hadn’t dislodged anything, Marshall’s weird chest tube was just fine as was everyone else.   
  
Except for Tod’s guitar, that lay smashed into a few hundred pieces. Probably for the better, Dash liked to think. It wasn’t that Tod was bad at guitar, it was just that he suffered from something Janet referred to as ‘Guitarists Disease’ which just meant when he was holding it, he was playing it. And no one was in the mood for music at a time like this.  
  
In a probably justified fashion, he was no longer talking to any of them and sitting facing the wall towards the back.   
  
Janet was sitting on top of some boxes, her head tilted to rest on Simon’s shoulder. Simon had an arm draped around her, and a back eye. Harley, when he started mutating, became one tough son of a bitch. Sara Sue was flipping through a disgustingly wet magazine that had probably been here since Dash lived here back in the nineties, and Melaine was pacing. Backward and forwards. Her heels click-clacking.   
  
Marshall was unconscious. Had been for weeks. No one knew why. No one knew how. One day, he just stopped waking up. If that was related to the end of the world outside, Dash had no idea if these events were related, but given that he’d taken the time to recruit a group of kids he used to consider his worst enemies, he probably did.  
  
Dash had not missed Eerie during his time away. He didn’t think any of them had, bar maybe Simon. Janet hated Eerie so much that she and Syndi moved to Australia as soon as she graduated high school for her mysterious government job. Simon found his way to Canada, where he opened his own veterinary practice. Melanie never left Germany after finishing medical school there. Tod went to Nashville, Sarah Sue to France and Dash himself took off to New York. Only Marshall stayed.   
  
Funny, the one of them that hated Eerie the most was the one who stayed behind.   
  
Not knowing what else to do with him, they had put in on Dash’s almost entirely untouched bedroll, and those with coats donated them to the cause of keeping him comfortable. Simon’s brown corduroy over his feet, Janet and Melanie’s jackets, one red leather and one black, like pillows and Dash’s ankle-length duster as a blanket. He hated to admit it, but he felt naked without a heavy coat on.   
  
Out there, the world was falling to shit. People were turning into mutants, the sky was red and, most horrifyingly, cats were falling from the sky. They’d been lucky to make it here at all, but they’d been here for hours and before long they were going to have to attend to basic human needs like food and water.   
  
“Marshall would know what to do,” Simon said, hopelessly. Everyone looked at him, then Marshall as if they might be able to magically wake him up with the sound of Simon’s voice. Nothing happened. Janet started weeping, the combination of losing Syndi, the woman she’d been with since high school and Marshall, her dear friend, overwhelming her. It took a lot to make Janet cry.   
  
“Well, Marshall isn’t here right now.” Monroe snapped at him, one of her long fingers pushing down on the scar from her heart transplant the way she always had when she was nervous. Probably would never be here again, but he was scared to think that. The yelling makes Janet weep harder and Simon tries to comfort her. Even now, he’s something of a child in a too-big body. Seems so innocent and kind. Dash knows what he is capable of, and also knows he would never lift a finger to hurt any of them; Marilyn didn’t raise him like that. That he would ever exist in the same world that didn’t have Marshall in it.   
  
He did love his New York boyfriend, he did, but he wasn’t Marshall. No matter where he was, or what he did, he was tethered to Marshall, to Eerie, with a rope around the waist. He used to loathe it. But now he understood. He looked down at Marshall’s limp hand he was clutching on to. He was never going to leave Eerie. If they got out of this alive, he’d spend the rest of his life in Eerie Hospital, with the soft pulsing of the TPN pump and tap-tap of the nurse's shoes. Why had he ever thought he wanted to be anywhere but here?  
  
“He could be.” Says Sara Sue. “I keep drawing him awake but it doesn’t work.”   
  
“Of course Marshall would be oblivious to your magic art,” Monroe says scornfully. “Wake up!” She shouted at him. He doesn’t stir. “Guess he’s immune to me too.”  
  
Great, Dash thought scornfully. Now one of them was having a mental break down. When he left Marshall at Eerie City Limits so many years ago, he’d envisioned coming back. He just wanted to see a bit of the world, a bit beyond the pale so to speak. New York was not permanent. Until it was. Until he got a boyfriend who wasn’t Marshall Teller. Until he got his own place. Until he got a job he loved organizing old movies. Until he’d left him in the dust, like everyone else.   
  
What was it they said at funerals? Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.   
  
Hardly thinking, he pressed his lips to Marshall’s hand. He wasn’t worried about what they thought of him anymore. If they saw him as a hopeless romantic than that was just fine by that. There was no point in hiding tenderness.   
  
“I love you.” He whispered.   
  
Blue eyes fluttered open.   
  
  



End file.
